I can’t say that yesterday’s Twitter #cfund debate was a huge success, but it was great to tap into the thoughts of journalists, media addicts and common users about new business models for new media. During the 10 hours of active debate we reached an average of almost 70 tweets per hour, which shows how lively it was. We didn’t come up with a solid solution for the financing problem of online media, but we sure gave a lot of suggestions. This wrap up is a mix of my interpretations and the words of all that participated in the debate. To them, my deepest thanks, they made my day.

We started by polling if people were willing to pay for news, and right from the start the no took the lead by a long distance. But, as the debate shows, users were willing to pay for special features, services, and fund investigative reporting. Soon Spot.us came up in the conversation, or wasn’t this a debate under the sign of crowdfunding. Dave Cohn’s project gathered consensus as an example of what users should be funding: independent, local reporting. In fact, local and unique content are ahead in the priorities of spending users.

But for the rest of the news, which should be the best model to apply? Micropayments were suggested, but only if there was a universal system, instead of an individual one that put walls around each newspaper. I found this a bit hard to apply but i can see the aim: users want it simple. Also noted as fundamental was that the news products should take in account niches and the specifics of the community.

There were many interesting comparisons with the music industry, though some differences must be highlighted: music is a perennial product, while news have a short life span, though now expanded thanks to the infinite archive of the web. The similarities come in the way users relate to the distribution of the product, and how the solutions provided by the music industry could work for the news industry. A iTunes like system could work if it was real cheap, and -in my opinion- could be fully costumizable. You’d buy the news you want. But quickly i find many reasons for this system to fail: i don’t want to buy news like i said before, and any user could share his buy with whoever he wanted. I don’t want to give any excuses to anyone create a news RIAA…

Crowdfunding as an option was widely discussed through out the debate. A system that would sit on the spontaneous,free contributions of users – or if required to fund a reporting project- is a concept pretty much well accepted by the majority of the participants. I had to ask for the pros and cons of crowdsourcing, and we found some flaws for this model, if used for certain structures.

The best part of crowdfunding is that it makes the users a part of the process, they put their money where their confidence is. But that implies the creation of valuable, trustworthy content. It’s a Darwinistic logic, only the best would survive. The cons are scale – it should work better with smaller endeavours, with a huge market. Portugal has 10 million inhabitants, so in most of the cities a crowdfunded project wouldn’t last long, but it might survive on a national level. In the American scale, things would work the other way around. Other problem that was raised was the sustainability: how to keep the users excited and making them sending money. And like someone said, it’s hard enough to please one boss, now try to please a crowd of them. But crowdsourcing works, and that’s a fact.

We also discussed if news companies should be profit or non-profit. To depend on external endorsements is risky, and i believe that without a commercial, competitive side, the news business might lose it’s edge. Public interest was discussed, but i think all news are of public interest. Editing options define the degree of importance of a story to a specific audience, and now those options are easily costumized by users when they choose the feeds they want to get. They become the editors.

Besides, in an environment prolific in content, users will have the last word. There is a middle man that gets out of the loop, which favors freelance writers and journalists, that can work directly for their audience, skipping a whole editorial structure and even traditional publishing.

After a while it became clear that the problem doesn’t rely on distribution only. It’s not how to make people pay that matters. It’s what they pay for. There is a whole structural matter that is not restricted to the distribution channels. It was defended that traditional media are not really trying to to create a new business model, but rather making an awkward attempt to adapt the old system to a new environment. It simply doesn’t work, the web is like the outer space, Earth rules do not apply. Blogs are more engaged to their audience, they are more connected to the people who read them because there is a relationship. Newspapers were objects, brands, a product with untouchable people inside.Users are no longer up for it.

Another thing that struck me was the inclusion of print in the possible business models suggested in the debate. Print has an important role in the news industry, because there is still a huge amount of audience for it. It should be treated as a luxury item, and not as the thing you use to wrap your fish and chips (nudge nudge to Britain). It has been always the content that set newspapers apart. Create real good content for print, and people will buy it. Fewer people, but that is a part of the definition of niche market.

And like Steve Yelvington suggested, why are you trying to sell just a newspaper? Widen the scope and create other products that also are journalism. How many of you bought a newspaper just because of the cartoons or the sports page, or the books that came with? Many times people bought newspapers not because of the news, but for the entertainment. So i find it hard to convince them to pay for it. Don’t charge us for content, but for premium products. Ok, this bit is my opinion.

Overall it was a sometimes hectic but well spent day in front of the computer. I regret the fact that i didn’t had more experts and journalists to debate. War stories are always better told by those who fought in the trenches. But the debate is far from over, so we’ll hear a lot from them too. Another peculiar thing is that yesterday there was a flood of business model related posts, which meant that even without their knowledge, there was a number of people eager to participate.

I have to thank all the people that joined us yesterday, and a special thanks to João Simão, a university teacher at UTAD that is trying to make a difference, he helped organizing and hosting the debate at his website, in just a couple of days. Lets get ready for the next one.

With the generous contributions of some of my readers i managed to complete the first stage of my crowdfunding endeavour in just a couple of days. I’ve already thank them, but i have to say thank you again, because they were timely with their help. Now my debts are solved, and like i said, it wasn’t that much money.

Now Phase II needs some discussion, but we’ll talk about it later in detail. This is also an experiment in crowdfunding, and i have to make an assessment of the current situation.

Though i managed to reach my first goal quite easily, i was surprised about two things: there were less donors than i expected, but they contributed in average with more money than i first predicted. Few, but generous.

But if i want to reach a sum for buying some video gear for example, i need more people to contribute and i don’t think that will happen. First of all because i’m not giving anything back, nothing tangible except my previous work. My inicial goal was to finance a story, a la Spot.us and then sell it or give it away. As i said, it was not possible now to do it without solving my current situation, but that is not enough. People need something back. Mark Luckie is selling t-shirts in his website (cool tees i have to say) and though i don’t know how is it going for him it’s a pretty simple and appealing concept. Buy from me, instead of pay me to keep me going.

Of course the buzz now is all about business models for newspapers, journalists and blogs, and my iniciative raised a few questions about how media online can survive, from private to corporate level. So this Thursday me and João Simão are organizing a Twitter debate about crowdfunding, new business models, and how is the common user be affected by all these new options recently layed on the table: paywalls, contributions, crowdfunding, bailouts, itunes like payments, etc. What do we as journalists think it must happen, and how far are we willing to go as users?